Ceremonial drum

Buddhist monks in Haeinsa Temple in South Korea beat the drum beopgo .

Ceremonial drum is a functional name for membranophone and idiophonic slit drums, which are beaten in the traditional way on cult, religious or ceremonial social occasions. Some ceremonial drums were specially made for their purpose and are accordingly elaborately designed. This includes drums, which are considered sacred objects and may only be used by a certain group of people. The drums can be played as a soloist or in a small ensemble to accompany singing in cult rituals or belong to a larger orchestra that plays during courtly ceremonies . Ceremonial drums can include tubular drums standing upright on the floor , large kettle drums , hand-held frame drums, and wooden slit drums .

distribution

In sub-Saharan Africa , certain drums are only used in secret society ceremonies or initiations . The Ewe in the south of Ghana know a ceremonial drum orchestra that performs at funerals or to worship deities of traditional religion. The gankogui double- stemmed bell sets the pace . Almost each of the orishas revered in the Yoruba religion has its own drum orchestra, which is of central importance for the cult of the respective deity. Drum music is also the medium through which the ritual participants come into contact with the deities in ecstasy . The drums played at religious ceremonies of the Yoruba are tubular drums that are open at the bottom and are covered with fur on one side. In the case of the ìgbìn , their wooden body stands on carved feet. According to tradition, these drums were once human beings before the Orishas brought them to earth.

The palace music of African traditional rulers, which is played at court ceremonies, includes drums and wind instruments, in northern Nigeria for example the cylinder drum gangan , the long trumpet kakaki and the cone oboe algaita . Kettle drums used in ceremonial court music in northern Africa can be traced back in individual cases to Arab influence and the naqqara kettle drum pair played in Islamic military bands and palace orchestras . This influence also applies to the long African metal trumpets, which are derived from the Arabic nafīr or the karna . Ceremonial drums are often an indispensable part of the ruler's insignia , without whose possession and ritual use he cannot be introduced into his office. According to a description from 1930 about the inauguration of the local ruler (title Mai ) of Fika, a chieftainship in the northern Nigerian state of Yobe , the superior Hausa leader ( Madaiki ) goes to the palace on the anniversary of the ruler's death and takes the snare drum to himself and carries her hidden under his cloak into his house. On the evening after the funeral, the Madaiki brings the snare drum and a large ceremonial drum into the palace, appoints the successor and installs him immediately in his office. When May beats the metal kettle drum three times and the Madaiki once, the inauguration ceremony is over and May is the deceased's legal successor.

In Dema -Ahnenkult the Marind-anim ceremonial drum used. Behind a costume of the cult actor. Tropical Museum , Amsterdam

The naqqara was part of the courtly ceremonial music naubat from the Middle East to India . The ceremonial orchestra was only allowed to act on the instructions of the ruler. A sign of her special power was that Nur Jahan (1577–1645), wife of the Indian mogul Jahangir , was allowed to play the ceremonial drum even in the presence of her husband.

The shaman's drums used in cults in northern regions are mostly circular single-headed frame drums. Some North American Indians instead use rattle drums , kettle drums, and occasionally water drums for shamanic and other magical practices.

The drums of the North American Indians are typically large, double-sided frame drums or cylinder drums. In the past, they were generally considered sacred and were not allowed to be played by everyone. The particularly revered "hanging" drum, a frame drum set up horizontally with four bars attached to the side, was kept by a "drum guard" among the Shoshone . Today at the Powwow , a social gathering lasting several days, in addition to the flat drums, large cylinder drums are also used, which are placed directly on the floor and beaten by several men sitting on chairs in the vicinity to accompany the singing. An example of a ceremony at the Fest Potlatch is the Coast Salish Winter Dance of the coastal Salish on the northwestern Pacific coast , in which male participants usually accompany drums and singing at a fireplace at night with made-up and costumed dancers appearing one after the other.

Lying slit drums in New Guinea appear in human form on the Sepik and on the Admiralty Islands , with the handle at one end representing the head and the handle at the opposite end representing the legs. In other regions, anthropomorphic slit drums are set up like statues. At the initiation on Sepik, the boys have to crawl into a tubular basket weave that is supposed to represent a crocodile, which devours the boys in a symbolic, dramatic action. They are carried around the ceremonial drums in this conical tube.

Some examples

Tubular drums

• The bekiviro is an almost man- high beaker drum made from a tree trunk, which is used on a few small islands off the northwest coast of Madagascar in an obsessional cult to worship the royal ancestors.
• Beopgo is a very large barrel drum that Buddhist monks in Korea beat with mallets during religious ceremonies outdoors. The drums are set up in a separate pavilion on the temple grounds. The body covered with cowhide is brightly painted with kites that fly on clouds. Large barrel drums are generally part of the daily ceremonies in Buddhist temples in East Asia and on special feast days. In Japan these drums are called taiko .
• The damaru is a small two-headed hourglass drum that is made from two skull bones for use in Tibetan ritual music according to ancient tradition. In India, wooden damaru are part of Hindu ceremonies.
• Ìgbìn is a simple cylinder drum made from a section of trunk of the Yoruba in Nigeria, the skin of which is stretched with wooden pegs. The sacred drum used in the Orisha cult stands on three feet, roughly carved out at the bottom. The three different sizes of the ìgbìn are struck with sticks, the largest shape with one hand and a stick.
• The two-skinned barrel drum kebero is used on holidays in the liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church .
• Pechiche is an approximately 1.2 meter long, slender cylinder drum covered on one side with fur, whose origin is in southern Africa and which occurs exclusively in the village of San Basilio de Palenque in Colombia. There she is beaten in the Cabildo Lumbalú according to African tradition to accompany funeral songs. The Lumbalú Group is the only remaining social organization ( cabildo ) in Colombia from the Spanish colonial era that comes together for this purpose.
• Pliéwo is a tubular drum in human form placed on the ground among the West African Senufo . The drum, which is covered on one side with fur, is carved out of a trunk section and consists of a bulbous body, which is decorated with formalized human and animal figures in high relief, and a base. In the case of a copy acquired in 1930, this shows a female figure crouching on a stool, who supports the body with her head and both hands raised. The drum was probably used at funeral ceremonies in the association of the sandogo age group , to which only women belong (a parallel institution to the men's association poro ).
• In addition to ceremonies in Buddhist temples in Japan, the great taiko is also used in concert at international performances. In the Middle Ages it was a samurai war drum .
• The yak bera (Sinhalese “demon drum”) or magul bera (“ceremonial drum”) is a double-skinned long cylinder drum used by Sinhalese in Sri Lanka for Buddhist rituals, private possession ceremonies and the ritual mask theater kolam .

Boiler drums

• Kultrún is a small, flat kettle drum that Mapuche use for shamanic practices on the southwest coast of South America. It is one of the few musical instruments preserved from before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century.
• Lilissu was the name of a sacred kettle drum usually made of bronze in Mesopotamia , whichdatesfrom the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. Until around 300 BC Was beaten by priests in the sacrificial cult.
• The nagra of the Garo in northeastern India has a large semicircular body made of baked clay. It may only be beaten by the village head for ceremonial signaling and only kept in his house.
• The negarit , a large kettle drum made of wood or metal, was the war and ceremonial drum of the Ethiopian emperors, which was struck during proclamations and, mounted on the back of a horse, preceded the emperor when traveling. Its name is related to the oriental naqqara , but did not play with metal trumpets and cone oboes.

Bass drum ( qilaat ) of the Eskimos on the island of Nunivak in the Bering Sea, 1927

Frame drums

→ Main article : frame drum

• Qilaat or qila is a large frame drum with a short handle in Greenland and in the Inuit culture of Canada, which was formerly used as a shaman's drum and which is still accompanied by entertainment songs and played at festivals today.
• Tof is theword for hand drums,which occurs several times in the Old Testament , and which in ancient times were often beaten by women for religious ceremonies and secular occasions. Frame drums were also part of the ceremonies of the Greek Dionysus cult , the Cybelekult , the mystery cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis and the Syrian Dea Syria .

Slotted drums

• Garamut is a large ceremonial drum in the form of a wooden slit drum that is used in ritual music in New Guinea , to accompany songs and dances at village festivals ( pidgin sing-sing ) and as a newsdrum. A garamut is considered a sacred instrument, its production in a remote place takes place according to traditional rules.
• Okha is a large Edo log drum in southwestern Nigeria that is used in ceremonies. Its counterpart is the somewhat smaller ogidigbo, which is beaten for entertainment .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ademola Adegbite: The Drum and Its Role in Yoruba religion. In: Journal of Religion in Africa, Vol. 18, Fasc. 1, February 1988, pp. 15-26, here pp. 15f.
2. ^ FGB Reynolds: The "Drum of Succession" of the Emirs of Fika . In: Man , Vol. 30, September 1930, pp. 155f.
3. ^ Exceptional Oceanic Marind-Anim ceremonial drum; Trans-Fly region, Southwestern Papua New Guinea . ( Memento of February 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) antiquehelper.com (image)
4. ↑ Annemarie Schimmel : In the Empire of the Mughals: History, Art, Culture. CH Beck, Munich 2000, p. 181
5. ^ Reginald Laubin , Gladys Laubin: Indian Dances of North America: Their Importance to Indian Life. ( The Civilization of the American Indian Series ) University of Oklahoma Press, Norman 1989, p. 105
6. ↑ Linda J. Goodman: Northwest Coast . In: Ellen Koskoff (Ed.): Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 3: The United States and Canada. Routledge, London 2000, pp. 396f
7. ^ Felix Speiser : Attempt of a cultural analysis of the central New Hebrides . In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie , 66th year, issue 1/3, 1934, pp. 128–186, here pp. 169, 178.
8. ↑ Beating of the Beopgo at Haein-SA. Youtube video
9. ^ Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch: Korea. Land of the morning calm. Hirmer, Munich 2002, p. 88.
10. ^ Drums of the Yoruba of Nigeria. Booklet of the LP: Folkways Records, FE 4441, recorded by William Bascom, 1953.
11. ^ Egberto Bermúdez: Syncretism, Identity, and Creativity in Afro-Colombian Musical Traditions. ( Memento of February 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) In: GH Béhague (Ed.): Music and Black Ethnicity: The Caribbean and South America. University of Miami, Miami 1994, p. 229
12. ^ Peter Wade: Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia. (Johns Hopkins Studies in Atlantic History and Culture) Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1995, p. 89
13. ↑ Kathleen E. Bickford, Cherise Smith: Art of the Western Sudan. In: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 23, No. 2 (African Art at The Art Institute of Chicago) 1997, pp. 104-119, 196, here p. 118.
14. ↑ Ewald F. Böning: Das kultrún, the mapuche's machi drum. In: Anthropos, Volume 73, Issue 5./6, 1978, pp. 817-844.
15. ^ Roger Blench: The Morphology and Distribution of Sub-Saharan Musical Instruments of North-African, Middle Eastern, and Asian, Origin. (PDF; 463 kB) In: Laurence Picken (Ed.): Musica Asiatica. Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 0-521-27837-6 , p. 161.
16. ^ Layne Redmond: Drumming. In: Cheris Kramarae, Dale Spender (Eds.): Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge. Routledge, New York 2000, p. 428.
17. ↑ James Leach: Drum and Voice: Aesthetics and Social Process on the Rai Coast of Papua New Guinea. In: Royal Anthropological Institute (NS) 8, 2002, pp. 713-734.
18. ^ Åke Norborg: Musical instruments of the Bini in southwest Nigeria. In: Erich Stockmann (Ed.): Music cultures in Africa. Verlag Neue Musik, Berlin 1987, p. 201.